E3 2012: Hands-on with PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale on PS Vita and PS3

It's hard to escape the fact that PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is essentially Sony's version of Super Smash Bros.

It's also hard to escape the fact that - unlike Nintendo's excellent console brawler - it's initially a little bit confusing.

During the first few rounds spent on the demo - with PG editor-in-chief Kristan Reed playing on the Vita and me on the PS3 - my opponent and I turned to each other completely baffled as to who / why / how he won / lost.

But, that was because we were playing it like Super Smash Bros., mashing the buttons and hitting each other whenever we could.

While the basics behind PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Nintendo's cartoony brawler are certainly analogous, their tactics differ markedly. Whereas the latter game revolves around throwing people off the stage, Sony's beat-'em-up prioritises aggression and risk.

Fight!

It's fitting, really, because Sony's selection of first- and second-party characters isn't anywhere near as cuddly and friendly as Nintendo's Link and Kirby.

Our demo battle may have featured the family-friendly Sly Cooper and Fat Princess (whose intro animation could double up as an anti-child obesity campaign), but it also featured the less-than-friendly faces of the Ghost of Sparta Kratos and the even-less-friendly make-up of Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal.

Each character in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale has its own range of moves based on its moveset in its own titles: so, Kratos has the chaos blades and Apollo's bow (among many others) at his disposal, while Sweet Tooth packs a more traditional shotgun blast and, err, some fire-breathing skills, which are mapped across the three attack buttons.

Keep fighting

While smacking your opponents around (of which there can be up to three across Vitas and PS3s) is positively encouraged, it's not the be-all and end-all in this particular brawler.

There's no damage bar, for instance, and while you can throw enemies into obstacles such as spike pits and electric gates with the right stick, all this helps you do is build your own special meter. Once this fills up, you can unleash an attack that can actually kill someone (virtually, of course).

By letting the bar fill up twice and three times over, you can unleash your character's super special moves, which are far more destructive (and with a wider area of effect) than the simple variation. Anyone caught by your specials is instantly killed, adding points to your tally that's only revealed at the end of the round.

There's also a touch of Power Stone about the battles, with objects appearing in the rapidly changing playing field that let you gain the upper hand, either by adding notches to your special meter or by giving you a nice big spear to slice people up with.

Fightin' round the world

As with the character selection, the environments we fought in reflected various popular Sony franchises, including Ratchet & Clank and God of War.

These aren't just cosmetic background changes, though, for they actually add a number of different obstacles to the gameplay, such as the aforementioned electric gates and the three-headed serpent boss from God of War 2 that can reach out from the background to eat an unwary opponent.

While the gameplay feels fast and manic, then, the emphasis on tactics became more pronounced as we spent more and more time in the game's company.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is both bright and fast on the big and small screens, but we'll have to wait until later this year to find out if it also has the staying power to last the distance in the ring.